Oldman Willow wrote:
Has anyone heard that this years Desolation of Smaug box set has been canceled or delayed because the Dragon model was rejected?
I have indeed seen this rumour (no one, firm source just from browsing the various forums over the last week) and some others that don't bode brilliantly for us.
Firstly to the Smaug rumour, I agree with the majority here, I don't think Smaug would have been in the starter set, I don't even think he would have been released in December so I doubt there's been much of an impact from that angle. It is perfectly possible that the license holders have sent the design back and delayed the Smaug model's release date but it shouldn't impact too much on what I imagine would have been in the first wave: elves, orcs, spiders etc.
However, there's a lot of other stuff going on that I find far more worrying - Last year when all the Hobbit stuff was released at the end of November there was very little released for 40K or Fantasy, the vast majority of the month's releases and White Dwarf coverage was, for once, devoted to the Hobbit.
However, this year there are two expansions for 40K and 1 for Fantasy all rumoured for release in December, demonstrating that, perhaps understandably, GW are no longer confident enough in the Hobbit range to support the month on its own.
What's far more worrying is that it's now been all but confirmed by various rumour sites that Tyranids for 40K are now being released in December. These have long been rumoured for January and this kind of last minute change up is fairly unprecedented for army releases for the two major systems. This certainly implies that, for whatever reason, in the last few weeks there has been a major shake-up in the release schedule for December.
Quite what this means for the Hobbit I don't know but I struggle to see how much attention we're going to get in a month where there are 3 expansions and a brand new army/codex for the other 2 systems.
It could be nothing and as always you have to take all these rumours with a pinch of salt but I must admit, in the last week I've gone from being ridiculously excited about seeing the new White Dwarf to really, really worried about what might lie in store for the future of the Hobbit range...
We shall see in 21 days, keep everything crossed folks.
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